The Arizona sentinel., 1887-07-09


 cries Showing the Fallacy
 of Former Rules.
 The subject of insanity is one of the most difficult as well as interesting studies that call for the attention oi the practitioner of either law oI medicine. To the discoveries of medi. cal science is due the great progress in this branch of jurisprudence during the later history of the law. It is but recently that law courts have arrived at a just idea of the relations of mental disease to individual acts and a proper understanding of personal responsi- bility. Comparatively recent re- searches in this branch of scientific in- vestigation have disclosed conditions of mental unsoundness that have never been brought to light before, and that present delicate questions for adjudica- tion. Different criterions and tests have been adopted from time to time by eminent jndioiai authorities only to be rejected as new light is thrown upon the subject. So delicate is the line between soundness and un- soundness, so nicely is the balance ad- justed in perfect mentality, and so seldom is proper equipoise main taIned even in the highest intellects that it is almost impossible to say when eccentricity ends and unsound- ness begins. Abnormal conditions of cerebral development are ever present affecting action; hereditary tendencies are often present; disease, even com mon functions, may have great, even controlling, force on human acts. What, then, shall settle the question of re- sponsibility? What shall prove an act normal or abnormal? The subject is indeed delicate, and is one of the most difficult before the courts.
 There are. many well-authenticated cases of the existence of an abnormal destructive tendency under the infu- ence of disease, this tendency usually appearing in persons of weak intellect. Epileptics are often impelled to incen- diarism during or after attacks. A case is reported where a man had set fires to his own dwelling without ap- parent reason, and was found crawling forth from under his blazing home mar rowly escaping death himself. It is well agreed that series of incendiary fires may and often have been traced to this controlling impulse. A peculiar instance of this sort comes from h. diana. A neighborhood in one of the central counties of the State, the center of which was small village, had for over a week been disturbed by numer- ous fires, which were early thought to be of incendiary origin. No clew could be found to the perpetrator of these acts, and it was thought that a gang of desperadoes were en- gagged in this destruction of property for robbery or revenge, and number of arrests were made. At last, how ever, the incendiary was caught in en- deavoring to bring about the destruc- tion of the entire village. One night fire broke out in four different places of the town, following one another very quickly. The alarm upon this occasion called out nearly all the peo- pie, and the criminal was discovered in the act of kindling a fifth fire in the barn of a near relative. The incen- diary was a boy of about nineteen years who was an epileptic and was put on trial for his offense. In the case it was developed that with the de- structive tendency which impeled him to these acts was coupled a hallucina- tion in describing which he said he thought he was the Devils fireman and was compeled to keep the eternal fires going. He probably obtained this peculiar fancy from the fact of his former occupation, which was that of fireman in small factory, from which position he had been discharged for neglect of duty.
 The question of responsibility in law comes in here, and it has met with the consideration of the courts with vary ing results. It is rule of the common law that person 1ncapacltated by mental Arrangement shall not be held for his acts, alth ough in person mentally sound they might con- stitute crimes of the most heinous nat ure. To determine the condition of different tests have have been adopted by eminent judicial bodies, and these have changed with the ad- vance of medical science, while dis carding theories and remaining on the grounds of accepted facts. The first test adopted by the courts of England was that of Lord Hale, which is known as the "child test " This was based upon the prin- ciple that a child under the age of fourteen is incapable of sufficient knowledge of right and wrong to be for any illegal acts which he might have committed. In the lan- guage of that learned judge: "The best can think of is this; Such 8